Alabama company charts limits of cheating and honesty

In Riverchase, ProctorU offers proctoring – monitoring of students during online exams – at any time, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for about 363 days out of the year. The company has offices in Alabama, California and the Philippines and monitors tests for schools and companies around the world.

Consequently, the company’s network of online proctors has seen many different, creatively ambitious – even dastardly - ways to cheat.

And yet, “the wig” has taken on the stuff of legend around the office. Jarrod Morgan, the company’s co-founder, says the incident happened about three years ago.

“We had a female taking an examination and, at one point, she pretended to drop something off of her desk,” Morgan said. “She rolled a pencil off. So she ducks off camera, and a moment later, a man appeared with a wig on, complete with five o’clock shadow, and proceeded to try to take the test.

“The proctor had to pick himself up off the floor and say, ‘Hey, we have a problem.’”

Last year, ProctorU oversaw 1.45 million exams. The company uses between 350 to 450 part-time and full-time human proctors during the year, along with a proprietary software that employs artificial intelligence to recognize behavior that might indicate cheating. Of those exams in 2018, 7,632 had confirmed and documented breaches.

In all, the company states on its website, there were 1.1 million exams in 2018 where unpermitted resources were removed prior to the test. That means everything from calculators to notes to books and other items.

That doesn’t mean that all of those 1.1 million exams would have had cheating. But at a time when universities and corporations are having to rely on distance learning and Internet-based testing, it’s easy to see the importance of the service. Because of this, ProctorU not only tells us a lot about the future of education, but illuminates the basic borders, and limits, of human character.

The all-seeing, online eyes

Matt Leaman has seen it. He’s been with ProctorU for four years, and spent more than two as an online proctor. Now he manages them.

Proctors get two weeks of training, and once they are up and running, they can oversee tests on staggered shifts occurring virtually anywhere. The exams range from university students to people in corporate settings to those seeking professional certification. Earlier this month, the company announced a multi-year, multi-million dollar deal with Google for itsG Suite Certification, which shows a worker is proficient in using cloud-based tech tools.

About 90 percent of the exams are overseen by a human proctor, who signs on with test takers and verifies their identity. Then the proctor, using a computer webcam, gets a look at the environment where the test is being taken. Once the test begins, the proctor is paying attention, as is the program. The job is to make sure the process is secure, but also deal with total strangers at what can be a moment of extreme anxiety and soul searching.

“The stakes are high, so the security has to be high, and we strive for quality," Leaman said.

ProctorU’s offices in Hoover are much like their other five. The blue color scheme is the same. The proctors wear uniforms and must oversee the exams from the office. In one room at ProctorU, a screen shows scores of proctors at computer screens watching at the other offices. Steve Morgan, the vice president of operations, can see what’s going on around the world at any moment. This helps keep the process uniform and trustworthy.

“We run a tight ship,” he said. “These are secure networks we’re using. We have to have strict controls in place. It’s a challenge. You have to have a very robust system.”

Academic cheating is probably as old as education itself. And in the days before online quizzes, of course, there were live, in-person proctors. There still are. Pam Paustian, the executive director of UAB’s division of e-learning and professional studies, has been in education for 18 years. UAB is one of Proctor U’s customers, and she is very complimentary of the company’s services. She remembers proctors walking around the room in the old days, observing test takers, looking for suspicious behavior.

But just how sure can we be that someone isn’t cheating? This question began to loom larger within the last 20 years, with the advent of distance learning.

What to look for

Just within the last month, ProctorU patented its online ID verification process. Over the last two years, it developed its artificial intelligence platform. AI is used to monitor the test taker during the testing process.

Think about your own behavior if you were taking a test through a computer. You’d probably be sitting down. You might pause to think. Your eyes may look at a non-distinct point or focus on something random in the room for a second while you try desperately to remember that one thing you suddenly can’t recall.

The computer program is looking at your eyes, your facial expressions, where your eyes may be going. Are they focusing on something off screen, and if so, is this happening too many times to be coincidental? Are you recalling information, or perhaps, reading a cheat sheet you’ve carefully positioned behind the screen? Are you just tilting your head, or is there something you’re looking at? What about that hand you keep bringing up to your mouth? Could something be written in your palm?

Certain factors, like location, are important. There’s a reason it’s easier to take an online test in a library instead of a coffee house. Jerrod said a student had to be told once that he couldn’t take an exam while in the backseat of a moving car, sandwiched between two other people. Another was prohibited from taking a test on the floor with his legs folded. The security process works better from a desk, as there is less opportunity for concealed information. There’s also the problem of the web camera angle, which must see the face.

“On the floor, the camera is aiming down, and it changed the way to see the person,” he said. “When you’re working with artificial intelligence, you have to be very cognizant of camera angles.”

Debra Fowler-Sandford, the company’s vice president of product management, said the AI program improves as it accumulates information gleaned from those millions of online exams. She compared it to the way a child’s knowledge grows through experience.

“The more data you have, the smarter you are,” she said. “After a certain point, it recognizes, this is a cheating behavior, this is not.”

Sitting in his office, Matthew Jaeh, the company’s chief technical officer, can call up a random test and look in. Not far from his desk, a two-foot tall figure of Darth Vader, ominously holding a webcam, looks out at any visitor.

In one portion of the screen is a live video link with the person taking the test, along with their location indicated on a map. Jaeh can see if the test taker has opened up a new web browser while taking the test, or attempted to copy and paste anything into the test. The program can track if certain key combinations reoccur, which might mean the person changed the command keys for copy and paste. The program can also track the IP address to make sure this person is actually taking the test at this location, at this computer.

The program will occasionally flag certain moments during a test for possible cheating behavior. The proctor can then immediately call that moment up. A test taker may occasionally talk aloud during the test. No problem, and not worth reporting. But if a proctor has a suspicion, they may go back and review that particular stretch of the test to see if anything else is spotted.

Let’s say cheating did occur. ProctorU stores every video view of every test for at least two years. That’s about 2 million tests. If a cheating incident is involved, they can store those sessions much longer for review.

“If a proctor sees something that might be cheating, he can say, ‘Pan over there, and let me see what you’re doing,’” Jaeh said. “Just the act of questioning somebody can stop someone when they’re about to cheat. We do a lot of cheat prevention.”

Remember that 1.1 million number of unpermitted resources removed last year? After the test taker signs in, the proctor asks for a look at the room. This usually takes place with the test taker rotating their laptop web cam 360 degrees around the room to give a look. If the proctor sees anything suspicious – scratch paper that looks like notes, books or materials within reaching distance, a phone – they can ask the person to put them up before the test proceeds.

Morgan said this simple act can prevent most people from cheating.

The essentials

Jarrod Morgan saw the difficulties of keeping test takers honest more than 10 years ago when he was working for Andrew Jackson University, a for-profit, distance learning school that was based in Birmingham. It was acquired in 2010 and is now known as New Charter University. Getting proctors for tests and ensuring a test’s integrity was a constant challenge.

“We had a student population scattered all over the world, and it was pretty resource intensive,” Jarrod said. “There were a lot of moving parts, we had to coordinate with an on-ground proctor, and it wasn’t really a paying gig to watch someone take a test. And we still found out that people were cheating like crazy. So the whole thing was broken, everybody hated it and it wasn’t effective.”

ProctorU grew out of this dissatisfaction. After looking at the testing process and surveying the available technology, Jarrod said three essential concepts emerged. To have a proper examination, a proctor has to be able to verify who the student is, see the student, and see what how they’re taking the examination.

Still, the initial feedback from schools was skepticism that web-based online test monitoring could work.

“The thing we had to get through people’s heads is that cheating has existed since the beginning,” he said. “There is no way to make any test cheatproof.”

ProctorU started in 2008, working exclusively within the education field. By July 2010, the company set an internal benchmark by proctoring 1,000 exams in a single month.

Webcams were becoming standard in laptops. Cameras were becoming de rigueur for smart phones. The ability to check the boxes of verifying online identities and monitoring test takers was getting easier. All the company would have to do is develop the digital tools to take the concept further, and the technology to handle the volume and provide a good customer experience.

About this time, when it was clear the company had found something, Jarrod called Jaeh, an old childhood friend from Pensacola and fellow classmate from the University of Florida.

But Jaeh was in Los Angeles. He had just put an offer on a house and was pursuing work in music while overseeing the Best Buy Geek Squad in the L.A. area. He and Jarrod had several “side projects,” ProctorU being one of them. Jarrod wanted him to run the company’s operations and technology.

It only took a plane trip, and a look at Alabama real estate prices, to sell him on the idea. By January 2011, Jaeh had moved his family and the company began to take off, picking up engineers at hackathons and growing with the Birmingham tech community.

By December 2014, ProctorU was monitoring 75,000 tests in a single month. Nearly two years later, in October 2016, it surpassed 100,000 exams in one month. The company has now proctored more than 5.1 million exams and partnered with about 1,300 educational and testing organizations.

Now there are 15 engineers in ProctorU’s offices, their quarter decorated with the typical start-up tech nerd office decor – “Star Wars” posters, Funko Pop figures and video game ware. Just two-and-a-half years ago, there were only about three engineers, said Bryan Craig, a product architect.

The limits of honesty

It should be stated here that ProctorU doesn’t punish cheaters. If a test is flagged for possible cheating behavior, a conflict resolution specialist may interrupt the test.

“They try to do it in a non-accusatory fashion,” Jarrod said. “If that person continues to exhibit that behavior, we document it, we record it, we give it to the testing organization. We don’t make the decision on what happens to the test taker. We don’t even know what happens to them. That’s not our job.”

What Jarrod and others say is that ProctorU’s services are really good at preventing cheating with the folks who might not plan on cheating – until they are deep into that really important test that they know can make or break their future, and they are flat bombing it. If you have 10 people in a test, and eight of them have to be told to put up their phone, or that incriminating sheet of paper, or that book, that might make some lose faith in the honesty of others.

“That alarms people. They wonder, were all those people going to cheat?” Jarrod said. “Probably not.”

But there’s a large percentage of people between the cheaters and the honest. You might call them situational cheaters. Ashley Norris, the company’s chief academic officer, talks about this. She came on board with ProctorU about a year ago with a background in education, having earned a PhD from the University of Alabama.

Some cheating behaviors Norris attributes to today’s culture. Some students don’t seem to understand the difference between writing a paper, and cutting and pasting whole paragraphs of information into a paper. Many students don’t know how to study. She thinks most people have good intentions, and may not realize they’re cheating.

But she’s also familiar with the theory of moral disengagement. That’s a term from social psychology for when people convince themselves that even closely held ethical standards, for whatever reason, do not apply to themselves in a particular situation.

Jinyan Fan is an associate professor of psychology at Auburn University. For the past three months, he has been studying online testing in China - the kind without proctors. Chinese officials commissioned the study after they began to wonder how much cheating was going on during online exams. They found test takers Googling answers, sharing answers with other students, even projecting their computer screens to share tests or to grab answers from others watching.

Fan said his study began interrupting tests and giving students the impression that they were being watched. In some cases, they were, with a program taking photos of the test takers every few minutes. The study found evidence of moral disengagement, among other aspects, once the students were surveyed after.

Students might experience anger if they felt thwarted in pursuing a goal. Or they might experience fear if they perceived someone watching them during the test, and guilt at being caught. They might then be motivated to repair any injury to their reputations.

Why were the students cheating? They may have perceived that everybody else was, and no one seemed to be getting caught.

“When you’re testing online, there’s a perception that ‘nobody’s watching me,’” Norris said. “And you may have somebody who thinks, ‘If I don’t pass this, I don’t know what I’m going to do.’”

The future of integrity

There are other factors. Universities struggle with student retention and financial aid fraud, making test integrity a paramount concern. Corporations, adopting procedures that require more work with less people filling the slots, rely heavily on online certification, as well as keeping their proprietary information secure and confidential. And professionals need online instruction and testing when they are forced by circumstances to switch careers.

Norris said education is moving more toward distance learning and using online capabilities. Universities are partnering with corporations to produce graduates for specific jobs, needing specialized certifications.

So that means more online tests, and more opportunities for combat with the crafty, conniving cheaters and the would-be, situational shysters. Yet Jarrod said if he didn’t see a large percentage of students attempting to cheat, he would be concerned that the process was not working.

“The only time I’ve seen proctors feel very emotionally upset is when they’re proctoring nursing exams,” he said. “They’re thinking, I might be in this person’s exam room and need them to know this. As we move from education into certification and licensure, there’s a real public good to affirm that someone has this knowledge that they’re being testing on.”